Related Tags

Related Sections

Tottenham manager Pochettino says Kane finds his praise 'boring'

Mauricio Pochettino has joked that Harry Kane is tiring of being lavished with praise by his Spurs boss. Kane will register his 100th goal for the club if he scores in today’s match at Newcastle, a milestone he will have reached in 166 games.

The England striker has yet to hit the target in August in the top flight but Pochettino believes he remains a special player.

“It’s a massive achievement. I think Harry is one of the best strikers in the world. It gets boring because I repeat it,” Pochettino said.

“Harry finds it boring sometimes and says ‘please gaffer, move on because always you say the same thing’. He’s a fantastic professional. We hope he’ll score.”

Tottenham’s season opener will be played against a backdrop of Danny Rose’s criticism of the club’s pay structure and transfer strategy.

Rose apologised for his comments on Friday and Pochettino has sought to move on, forgiving the England full-back, but and Magpies boss Rafael Benitez is not convinced Mauricio Pochettino’s team will be distracted.

He said: “Pochettino is a great manager and they have the same team that has finished second and third in the last two years.

“When you have young players with a good understanding and another year of experience, they have to be better, so I don’t think it will be a problem for them because they have the same manager, the same staff, the same players and more experience, so they will be even more dangerous.”

“In my other clubs what I had was more players scoring goals,” he said. “Midfield players scoring goals, wingers scoring goals, central defenders good in the air scoring goals at set-pieces.

“We always had that so my teams always had the goalscorer, we always had the guy that scores more goals, but then we had the winger that scored 15 goals, we had the midfield player who scored 10 goals, we had the central defender that scored five goals.

“And last season we were focused on the goals that our striker was scoring and when he was not scoring, the team was a little bit in trouble to win matches.”

At the other end of the field, Mourinho is set to reinstate Phil Jones and Eric Bailly as his centre-backs against West Ham.

Bailly and Jones missed Tuesday’s UEFA Super Cup defeat to Real Madrid through suspension, but their continental ban does not impact domestic matches.